Nandini Seeks Probe into ₹1 Milk Sale Online

The Bangalore Urban, Rural and Ramanagara District Co-operative Milk Producers’ Societies’ Union Ltd (BAMUL), which markets the Nandini dairy brand under the Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF), has urged the Government of India and the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to investigate deep discounting of milk on quick-commerce platforms.

In a March 14 representation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the CCI, BAMUL president and former MP D.K. Suresh raised concerns over a promotional campaign by Flipkart’s quick-commerce service Flipkart Minutes, which advertised milk at ₹1 per half litre as part of a customer acquisition drive. The union warned that such aggressive discounting appears far below the economic cost of milk procurement, processing, packaging, transportation, cold-chain management and retail distribution, and could distort the dairy value chain.

BAMUL said such pricing may be supported by platform subsidies or investor-funded promotional strategies, potentially raising concerns under Section 4 of the Competition Act, 2002, which deals with abuse of dominant market position. The cooperative also cautioned that milk could be used as a “loss-leader” product to attract users to digital platforms, where companies incur losses on one item but recover costs through cross-selling and other services.

According to BAMUL, such practices could disrupt stable procurement prices for farmers, weaken cooperative dairy institutions and hurt neighbourhood retailers that depend heavily on milk sales for daily footfall. Flipkart, however, said the campaign was a limited promotional offer, adding that sellers continue to receive the full agreed price and farmer procurement prices remain unaffected.

The union has urged regulators to examine whether such pricing amounts to predatory pricing and to introduce safeguards to protect India’s dairy ecosystem, which supports millions of small dairy farmers.

Source: Dairynews7x7 15th March, 2026 Read full story here

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